The resale value's gonna be nil

Remember that WC Fields movie where he's swerving the getaway car wildly all over the road and the passenger says gimme the wheel and he yanks it off the steering column and hands it over? Government is a lot like that. Some people thought Obama was going to be the messiah and some were afraid he was all four horsemen of the apocalypse. They drew Hitler mustaches on him or compared him to everyone from Lincoln to Wilson. But seriously, here's a smart, pragmatic guy surrounded by party hacks fighting over the helm when the rudder's busted. He's America's Gorbachev.

Fanny pack! Camera! Action!

Here's a great way to have big family fun without spending a lot of cash: be a tourist in your own hometown! When was the last time you rode the elevator to the highest floor of your area's tallest building? Okay, maybe you work there... what's important is that sense of wonder and discovery. Try this: go to Chi Chi's or Olive Garden and pretend you've never heard of any of these exotic foreign dishes before – get your server to explain foods like spaghetti or taco salad. Act all excited and curious. Then when your food comes, ask for chopsticks.

Post-modern? Try post-Copernican.

Some folks want to get back to nature and fix things back the way they used to be, which if you think about it the way things used to be is the direct cause of the ways things are right now. How can you call yourself a progressive thinker if you share with folks like Ptolemy and Augustine of Hippo a belief in the fundamental schism between humans and the rest of creation? As far as I'm concerned a bowl of organic granola, a nice fresh Twinkie, an anthill, and the Large Hadron Collider are all equally products of nature.

I've been through heck, I tell you. Absolute heck.

When we study the lives of the great, we learn how their destinies were shaped by painful, calamitous events that threatened their very existence, brought tremendous hardship, and sculpted from the shapeless clay of consciousness a fundamentally new perception of reality. I've just been through something like this myself. While I don't want to compare my severe headcold with the experiences of men like Nelson Mandela or Elie Wiesel, I need you to understand that I have been very, very congested. And I have concluded that Jerry Bartz of Gems TV is the finest broadcast talent working in America today.

Thanks, David

It was my own fault. The only reason Titanic is the worst movie I've ever seen is because I watched it. James Cameron, a technical whiz, has the soul of an anteater. I wasn't at all shocked when four intelligent persons of my acquaintance called up to say they thought Avatar was just a steaming pile of crap. I was, however, pleasantly surprised when my son-in-law unintentionally wrote my rant for me by saying, “Imagine if the writers from the He-Man cartoons wrote a remake of Dances with Wolves but instead of Indians it had Smurfs in space.”

I normally put a headline here.

I persist in writing this weekly rant for three compelling reasons: I'm not required to do it. I don't get paid to do it. Nobody cares if I do it. So I do it. But I know I want to stop someday before I turn into Andy Rooney. The Irascible Geezer with a Twinkle in his Eye. “You kids got it easy. When I was your age, we had to rewind movies after we watched them.” And it becomes cute when you snap at someone, 'cause you don't have any teeth. Christ. Just put me out on the ice flow.

"Take, eat; this is my body."

Recently publicized finance records have revealed that last summer, the Archdiocese of New Orleans sent $2.000.00 to Maine to repeal gay marriage. A pittance compared to some dioceses; impoverished and nearly-abandoned Youngstown, Ohio, kicked in ten grand; Philly and Phoenix each anted up fifty large. It wasn't even their money – all their cash comes from collection plates. As I understand it, it's the Church's position that marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman, while gay sex is a sacred bond between a priest and an altar boy. The clerical mind is nothing if not orderly.